Stanislaw Lem

These wickedly authentic introductions to twenty-first-century books preface tomes on teaching English to bacteria, using animated X-rays to create "pornograms," and analyzing computer-generated literature through the science of "bitistics." "Lem, a science fiction Bach, plays in this book a googleplex of variations on his basic themes" (New York Times Book Review). Translated by Marc E. Heine. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

“Lem has an almost Dickensian genius for vividly realizing the tragedy and comedy of future machines.” —The New York Times Book Review
These are the stories of Trurl and Klapaucius, master inventors and engineers known as “constructors,” who have created marvels for kingdoms. Friends and rivals, they are constantly outdoing and challenging each other to reveal the next great evolution in cybernetics,...

Brilliant stories of a bumbling astronaut, and the human desire to discover the unknown, by the much-loved author of Solaris.
Set in the not-too-distant future, when space flight has evolved to the point where humanity is ready to colonize the solar system, Tales of Pirx the Pilot follows one somewhat-hapless explorer as he struggles though his training as a cadet, his career as a pilot, and his tenure as captain of a merchant...

Robot armies, an arms race in space, and a brain at war with itself add up to “a futuristic version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (The Boston Phoenix). 
Anxious to avoid a war that would destroy the entire planet, the major powers of Earth have come to an ingenious compromise. Each country sends a force of adaptable, self-programming robots to the surface of the moon to play out the conflict there and, hopefully,...

Ingenious essays from “a Jorge Luis Borges for the Space Age, who plays in earnest with every concept . . . from free will to probability theory” (The New York Times Book Review).
In A Perfect Vacuum, Stanislaw Lem steps outside of his fictional comfort zone to try his hand at reviewing the literature of others. The only catch is this: None of these books have actually been published—or...

The absurdly brilliant far-future satire from "the Borges of scientific culture" (Time).

The year is 3149, and a vast paper destroying blight—papyralysis—has obliterated much of the planet's written history. Fortunately, these rare memoirs, preserved for centuries in a volcanic rock, record the strange life of a man trapped in a hermetically sealed underground community . . .

From the Kafka Prize–winning...

A space cruiser encounters beings descended from self-replicating machines in this sci-fi classic with echoes of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne!

“A giant of mid-20th-century science fiction, in a league with Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Philip K. Dick.” —The New York Times

Stanisław Lem’s The Invincible tells the story of a space cruiser sent to an obscure...

A playful, witty, reflective memoir of childhood by the science fiction master Stanisław Lem.

With Highcastle, Stanisław Lem offers a memoir of his childhood and youth in prewar Lvov. Reflective, artful, witty, playful—“I was a monster,” he observes ruefully—this lively and charming book describes a youth spent reading voraciously (he was especially interested in medical texts and French novels), smashing

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Of these twelve short stories by science fiction master Stanislaw Lem, only three have previously appeared in English, making this the first "new" book of fiction by Lem since the late 1980s. The stories display the full range of Lem's intense curiosity about scientific ideas as well as his sardonic approach to human nature, presenting as multifarious a collection of mad scientists as any reader could wish for. Many of these stories feature artificial...

“A stunningly inventive fantasy about cosmic travel” from the Kafka Prize–winning author of Solaris (The New York Times).
The Hermes explorer ship represents the epitome of Earth’s excellence: a peaceful mission sent forth to make first contact with an alien civilization, and to use the expansive space technology developed by humanity to seek new worlds, friendships, and alliances....